Cabbage – live at TRNSMT

If you like your bands to have terrible names and good music then look no further than Cabbage. The Manchester(ish) band pick and mix sounds from Public Image LTD and Dead Kennedys with odd bars of Teenage Fanclub, Arctic Monkeys and The Libertines. Cabbage offer the catchiest of song titles such as Uber Capitalist Death Trade, Grim Up North Korea and Free Steven Avery. The band are genuinely one of the most interesting acts on the bill and one that from now on I will make a point of finding their tour dates.

Along with their song titles, they have the odd track coming in at over seven minutes and they seem set on making themselves as radio unfriendly as possible; which probably isn’t that big a deal given that just about everyone downloads or streams anyway. What goes against the band’s seemingly deliberate attempts to avoid popularity is that they make good, worthwhile music- then again maybe that will ensure that they are kept out of the Ed Sheeran dominated charts.

Onstage there are the odd moments when they slip into standard indie band twangy guitar music but that gets blown away pretty quickly with some gritty distortion or raw vocals. They have the advantage of being inexperienced enough to be lacking in self-awareness and that allows them to be all the more uninhibited- they are certainly experienced enough to not be coy or lacking in self-belief. If, like me, you were ecstatic that Greenday weren’t able to besmirch the Glasgow air with their music and found it hilarious that the American “punk” band were defeated by the might of a gentle drizzle, then come and find Cabbage- either now or at a later date- chances are they will be more to your sarcastic, sneering taste.